Blood Men

by Paul Cleave

  “Shit,” the first guy says, and he’s staring at me now. “Okay, buddy, you’re volunteering.”

  “I’ll do what you want as long as you don’t hurt anybody else,” I say.

  He offers a short, cold laugh. “No, you got it all wrong. You didn’t volunteer yourself, you went ahead and volunteered that pretty little thing next to you.”

  “Don’t,” I say, and I step toward the man coming toward me and put my hand out in a stopping gesture. He doesn’t even slow down. He comes in around my arm and hits me with the gun in the side of my face, hard enough to knock me down.

  “Eddie. .” Jodie is pulled to her feet.

  Things are out of focus. I’ve fallen onto my side. I get my hands onto the ground and push up. There are two Jodies. Twelve gunmen. They pick up the bags of cash and head for the door. Nobody else is moving. Nobody else is helping. The twelve men turn back into six, they’re at the door and they have Jodie with them. I figure if the police are only two minutes away they’re probably driving and the Friday lunchtime traffic has brought them to a crawl.

  “Eddie,” Jodie screams, reaching toward me, and it takes two of them to drag her through the door. I get to my feet, wobbling left and right somewhat. I stumble over my feet and trip myself up, hitting the floor hard with my palms. They toss the bags of money inside a van and five of them climb in right alongside it. The sixth guy keeps holding my wife.

  I get outside. Nobody follows me. There are people on the street, but they’re all ducked down behind parked cars and huddling in shop doorways. Shopwindows painted over with Christmas scenes have faces pressed against the glass. The kids in the hoodies are popping their heads up from behind a row of motorbikes and pointing cell phones at us. I can’t hear any sirens or see any police. Cars have stopped about twenty meters away in both directions. The guy pushes Jodie toward me. She cries out and stumbles. She reaches out for balance and I can tell she’s going down, she’s going to hit the sidewalk.

  He raises the shotgun. He points it right at her. He doesn’t even hesitate, just pulls the trigger. Shoot her in the back, Jack.

  “No,” I scream, but the word is lost over the explosion. My wife hits the road. The shooter jumps into the back of the van and closes the door. The driver accelerates hard, the engine revs loudly and smoke drifts up off the tires. I reach my wife as the van turns the corner, running a red light and leaving us alone.

  chapter four

  Keep her alive, Clive.

  I have no idea why I keep thinking of the song Jodie sang this morning, perhaps the last song she’ll ever get to sing, steam from the shower thick in the air, the penguin radio launching out classic songs from a classic hits station. The words are in my head but they don’t even feel like mine, as though somebody put them there, an English teacher or a bad comedian having reached out somehow and implanted them.

  She’s dead, Fred-and don’t worry, you’ll be hearing from me soon.

  I scream for help but the only thing people are brave enough to do is step out from whatever hole they hid in and point cell phone cameras at me while others make calls. I try to hold the blood inside her, but it keeps flowing.

  “Jodie, oh God, Jodie, it’s going to be okay,” I say, and I roll her onto her side so I can see her face while keeping pressure on her back. There is so much blood. Way too much blood. It’s seeping between my fingers. It’s like water. I need more hands. More help.

  I need a miracle.

  Jodie’s eyes are open and she turns them toward me but focuses beyond me, somewhere a thousand miles away.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I say. “I promise.”

  “My shoes hurt,” she says, and she smiles, and she keeps staring past me and a moment later I realize she’s no longer seeing anything at all.

  “Jodie. .”

  There are too many holes in her, I can’t stem them all. Her face is pale, except around her nose which has been broken and flattened when she fell. Blood is smeared there, there’s a deep cut in her upper lip where it’s been sliced by her teeth.

  “Please, please, Jodie, don’t do this, don’t do this,” I say. “Don’t leave me alone.”

  But Jodie is doing this.

  “Jodie, please,” I say, but my words are only whispers now.

  People move closer to get a better look, to get a better angle, a clearer photo. Nobody offers to help. Maybe they can see there is no point. Nobody has come out of the bank-either they’re in too much shock or maybe they’re trying to save the manager and the security guard. Sirens appear in the distance and get louder, and soon they appear, police cars and ambulances, all of them too late. The safety they bring with them allows more bystanders to come forward and watch and point and revel in the drama. Two paramedics rush over to Jodie, each of them carrying a case of lifesaving tools.

  “Out of the way,” one of them says.

  “She’s. .”

  “Move,” he repeats.

  I move aside. The two men crouch down over her. One of them slides a pair of scissors up her shirt and exposes the wounds. His expression doesn’t change. He’s seen it all before.

  “No pulse,” the other one says. “It doesn’t look. .”

  “I know, I know,” the first one says.

  He pulls padding out from his case and jams it against the wound as if trying to pack the hole. They roll her onto her back and while one begins CPR, the other fires up a defibrillator. They hold off on using it, pursuing the CPR which-for the moment-couldn’t be any more useless.

  “Shock her,” the first one says.

  For a moment the two men stare at each other, the words unspoken, but I can see what they’re saying. They both know there’s no point. Both think it’s too late. One of them figures it’s best to at least put on a show because I’m watching.

  They attach large pads to her chest, but they work slowly, methodically, their body language admitting defeat. Jodie’s body arches upward as the volts go through her, putting tension on her spine. The pool of blood on the ground beneath her grows as the holes in her back widen and close like small apertures.

  “Again.”

  They try it again. Then a third time. Then they go about packing everything away.

  “I’m sorry,” one of them says.

  “Do something else,” I say.

  “There is nothing else.”

  “There has to be.”

  “There’s too much damage. She’s too far gone. Even if we’d been here sooner there’s nothing we could have done. The gunshot-I’m sorry, mate,” he says, slowly shaking his head.

  “She can’t die like this.”

  “She’s already dead. She’s been dead from the moment she got hit.”

  “No, no, you’re wrong. She’s supposed to die in another fifty years. We’re going to grow old together.”

  “Sorry, mate, I truly wish there was something we could do.”

  I take a step toward him. He steps back. “You can do something,” I say. “You can save her.”

  His partner comes over. They’ve been in this situation before.

  “I said help her.”

  “I’m sorry, mate. We’ve done all we can.”

  Armed police officers are filling the street. One of them heads toward us.

  “Please,” I say. “There has to be something.”

  “I wish there was, I truly do,” he says, and then they walk away and head toward the bank, where two other paramedics are coming out, wheeling a gurney with the security guard on it who at the moment is still alive. The armed officer stops coming over and decides to give another officer a hand to string yellow police tape all over the place, making the street a lot more colorful, blending the crime scene into the Christmas atmosphere of town-tinsel, fake Santas, candy canes, fake snow, and real blood.

  I sit on the ground and hold my wife. I cradle her head in my lap and stroke her hair. I close her eyes but they keep opening up about halfway. The ground is blotted in blood and bandaging, there’s a bl
oody latex glove lying on her leg. A man in a suit comes up to me and crouches down. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he says, and I doubt he really understands the word “sorry” or the word “loss.” Nobody can. “The van, did you see a license plate? Did you see anything?”

  “They killed her.”

  “Please, sir, this is important. If you. .”

  “They wanted a volunteer. Got to be twenty-five people in that bank. They could have taken anybody but they took Jodie. That’s a four percent chance. Calculate in that one person who was already dead, and that’s what? What?” I look up at him. “What the hell does that make it? Tell me!” I shout. “Tell me!”

  “The van. Did you see it?”

  “All I could see was Jodie. I wish I saw more. I wish we’d never come here today. I wish. .” I run out of words.

  “Okay, okay, sir. You should step away from her now, you have to let us do our job.”

  “Get away from me,” I say, and the words come out evenly and forcefully and he doesn’t argue. He steps away and I don’t watch where he goes. For a while nobody else approaches me. They see my dead wife and they know I didn’t shoot her so they leave me be. Somewhere else in the city they’re chasing the van, maybe they’ve caught it already. There’s been a shoot-out and all six bank robbers are dead. They’re all dying slowly from horrible, horrible gunshot wounds.

  I want these people to be dead. I need them to be dead. Media vans speed into the street and brake heavily behind the barriers that have been set up. They jump out of their vans as if they’re on fire. Dozens of lenses and hundreds of eyes all staring at me, I’m sure some of them are making the connection, their synapses firing, thinking, we know that guy, we know that guy, their hunger for the story evident in the way their eyes almost bug out of their skulls as they stare in excitement, evident in the way they try to push past the officers forming a perimeter. I want to walk among them, wipe my wife’s blood on their faces, over their hands, I want to make them part of the story and ask them how it feels, ask how they can thrive on such suffering.

  I don’t have the strength, and if I did, it would only add to their frenzy, offer up sound bites and make them more money. All I can do is cradle my wife and watch her become blurry as the anger and despair take their toll and the tears fall freely, dripping onto Jodie’s face.

  Police push the barriers further back. They try clearing the street but the show is too good for these people to miss. Arguments turn into shouting matches. Some of the reporters yell questions at me. In the end the police are outnumbered. The police are always outnumbered. Reporters appear at the windows of neighboring buildings, filming us from the floors above.

  A woman comes over and touches my shoulder and tells me it’s time to let Jodie go. I don’t want to, but I know I have to.

  “Get me something,” I say, “to put over her.”

  “Sir. .”

  “Please.”

  She comes back with a thick white sheet. I bunch up a corner of it into as good a pillow as I can make and prop it under Jodie’s head. I spread the rest over her. I step back and can’t pull myself away from the shape beneath it. I can still taste the lunch in my mouth, can still feel her hand in my hand as we walked to the bank.

  “We’ll take care of her,” the woman says, and she puts her hands on my arm. “Please, it’s time to come inside,” she says, and I let her lead me, my wife left outside, my wife an item now, a piece of evidence, and I crouch over and throw up before stepping back into the bank.

  chapter five

  Where there is room, the cars pull over for him, his siren warning of the urgency. The problem is there isn’t always room and he gets caught up at intersections, boxed in by traffic that on Friday afternoons takes on a life of its own. Cars that try to pull over for him end up blocking the way, people panicking and almost causing accidents. Schroder’s already heard the bank robbers made a clean exit. Heard about the victims. There are plenty of armed officers on the scene but it’s all too late.

  The entire block is cordoned off. Suction Cup Guy is out of Schroder’s mind as he parks outside the barriers, ducks under the police tape, and walks into the carnage. There’s a body in the middle of the street with a sheet over it. The woman. There are hundreds of onlookers and dozens of media and he figures, as bad as this is for the people who were in the bank, as bad as it is for the dead woman in the street, today is turning out to be a great day for the media and sightseers. A bad day for the cops is gold for the six o’clock news. A couple of street performers are hanging out behind everybody else, juggling bright-colored objects and trying to cash in on the gathering crowd.

  Inside the bank people are pale, they’re lost and confused and there is streaked makeup from tears and swollen eyes. He’s the third detective on the scene, and he’s quickly given updates from the other two. There’s a body lying outside an office, this one exposed. He gives an instruction to cover it, hoping it will go some way to calming the witnesses.

  The husband of the woman killed is sitting in another office.

  “Edward Hunter,” one of the detectives says, pointing toward him.

  “Hunter?”

  “Yeah. Why? You recognize him?”

  “I think so, but the name doesn’t line up. Anybody spoken to him yet?” Schroder asks.

  “He only just came inside. We almost had to pull him away from his wife.”

  The office has new furniture and a rubber plant in the corner with leaves coated in dust. Schroder steps inside and closes the door and Edward Hunter looks up from the desk and watches him with eyes that are bloodshot.

  “It’s colder in here than before,” Edward says, then pulls his shirt away from his body. It’s covered in blood and sticking against him.

  Outside the office more people are arriving, other detectives to take statements. Men in white nylon suits are scouring the scene for evidence-the problem is the scene has been trampled over by too many people already.

  “My name is Carl Schroder,” he says, sitting down opposite Edward and not offering to shake hands, “and I know this is difficult, I know answering questions is the last thing you want to do right now, but you. .”

  “Not difficult,” Edward answers. “Impossible.”

  “You’re right. It is impossible.” He pauses, taking in the impossibility of the situation. He isn’t the one who woke up today and lost his wife.

  “Are you married?” Edward asks.

  “Please, we need to focus. .”

  “You imagine what it’d be like if that was your wife out there?”

  “I’d want the men who did this caught.”

  “You mean you haven’t found them yet?”

  “We’re working on it, Edward. It is Edward, right? Not Jack?”

  “I didn’t give you my name.”

  “I know.”

  “Jack’s my father’s name, not mine, not anymore. Which means you recognize me. Everybody recognizes me.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that.”

  “It’s true. You recognized me. You didn’t know whether to call me Jack or Edward, so you knew. Everybody knows.”

  “I recognized you because I was there the day your dad was arrested.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” he answers. It was his first year on the force. He hadn’t spoken to Jack Hunter Sr., or really been anywhere near him. He’d been one of the constables who’d come along for the ride. He got a real good look at Jack Hunter Junior, the young boy, full of tears and pain.

  “I remember you,” Jack-now Edward-says. “But not from then. From the year after. You were the one who came when Mum died.”

  “I know,” Schroder answers. That was his second year on the force. He and his partner had gone inside and found the woman in the bathtub. He can still recall exactly how she looked, how the bathroom felt, can picture the emptiness in her eyes. Edward and his sister were sitting on the bathroom floor, the sister with her arm around Edward, both of them leaning against the
wall, Edward unable to take his eyes from the floor. Schroder and his partner had gone in and taken the children out before examining the body. The sister had told them what had happened. Edward never said a word.

  “You’re always there when my family is hurting,” Edward says, and Schroder can see the little boy all those years ago in this man now. “And you’ve never made it any better. Am I a suspect in this, now that you know who I am?” his voice getting louder. Angrier.

  “Of course not. Why would you think that?”

  “People always think weird shit like that. I’ve grown up with it.”

  “What I need from you is to focus, Edward. I know this is hard,” he says, “but this is the time where you can help the most.”

  “They just, they just came into the bank,” Edward says, shaking his head as he talks and turning his palms up, “you know? Just came in like they owned the place. The way they shot the manager, they didn’t care. They didn’t have to kill anybody. They were getting their money and. . I mean, why do that? Why take the time to do that? Even when it was all done, they took Jodie with them. Why would they do that?”

  “We’ve heard from other witnesses the men said they wanted a volunteer.”

  “I tried to get them to take me.”

  “I know you did. They also said you saved one of the tellers from being taken, maybe even saving her life.”

  “What?”

  “They say you called out. They say the men were going to take her, and you stopped them. That was a brave thing,” he says, trying to prompt Edward. “A brave thing, risking your life.”

  “Yeah, it wasn’t my life I risked in the end, was it? They were going to take her and they took Jodie instead.”

  “You couldn’t have known that.”

  “You think?”

  “It’s a fact. It’s a bad situation, Edward, a bad situation and people died, and you’re the only one in that bank who had the balls to try and do something about it, to try and save somebody’s life, and that woman is alive thanks to you.”

  “It’s a shitty flip side, right? She’s alive because of me and my wife is dead for the same reason. It’s no different from me pulling the trigger myself.”